IBM Announces Agreements with Leading Network Companies To Support Increasingly Interconnected IT Infrastructures

ARMONK, NY, July 22, 2009 - IBM today announced agreements for networking technology with Brocade, Cisco and Juniper to help businesses more effectively route the enormous amount of data and transactions being driven by an increasingly instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent world.

IBM is announcing reseller and OEM agreements for switches and routers that help move and manage data across networks. Demands on networks are increasing with the proliferation of the mobile web and connected sensors expected to lead to 16-fold growth in each individual's "information footprint" by 2020, according to IBM.

New and/or expanded networking supplier relationships announced today:
Brocade -- IBM has introduced the IBM Converged Switch B32 and 10Gb Converged Network Adapter (CNA) for IBM System x, its first Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) offerings, manufactured by Brocade. This expands upon the long-standing Fibre Channel and recently announced Ethernet solution OEM agreement between both companies. The IBM Converged Switch B32 and CNAs are available immediately.
Cisco -- IBM has expanded its long-standing relationship with Cisco through a new agreement enabling its Systems & Technology Group sellers and partners to resell the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switches, a leading family of high-performance, low-latency switches for data center networks supporting lossless 10GbE, Fibre Channel and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). These products may be ordered immediately and are expected to be available in August 2009.
Juniper Networks - IBM today is announcing an original equipment manufacturing (OEM) agreement with Juniper Networks where IBM will rebrand and sell selected Juniper EX and MX switches and routers. Availability expected later this year. This expands upon IBM and Juniper's long-term relationship that includes a reseller agreement with IBM Global Technology Services, as well as collaboration on Juniper's Stratus Project, and IBM's ten worldwide Cloud Labs.

FCoE represents an emerging technology that provides faster networking performance and offers customers the potential to simplify their datacenter infrastructure and lower both capital and operational expenses via the consolidation of multiple data traffic flows over a shared network.

IBM will also provide services through its Global Technology Services unit to integrate networking products, and offers IBM Systems Director and Tivoli network management software to manage the flow of data and transactions.For more information about IBM and IBM's networking switches and offerings, visit http://www.ibm.com/systems/networking.